Temporary police recruitment to start soon

KATHMANDU, March 20: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) has prepared a proposal seeking permission from the cabinet to recruit 75,000 temporary police for the upcoming local polls. MoHA officials said that the hiring process of temporary police would start once the proposal gets approved by the cabinet.

“We have prepared a draft proposing recruitment of 75,000 temporary police for the polls. The proposal will be forwarded to the cabinet in a couple of days,” MoHA Spokesperson Bal Krishna Panthi told Republica. MoHA officials said that the cost for hiring the temporary police personnel is likely to exceed Rs 8 billion. They said that women and people with security background will be given priority during the hiring process. “The hiring process would start soon after getting approval. We have already finished groundwork for recruitment,” said Panthi.

MoHA officials say that the role of the temporary police will be crucial during the polls scheduled for May 14. The polls security plans prepared by the government seeks to deploy mostly temporary police in polling stations considered to be relatively safe. The polls security plans, which was prepared with inputs from the Nepal Army, Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and National Investigation Department (NID), has identified 1847 places as extremely sensitive zones, 4260 places as sensitive zone and 5526 places as normal zone. There will be 21,000 polling stations across the country.

“The temporary police will play a supplementary role. They will be working inside the polling stations,” said a MoHA official.